Good ideas can’t get past Democratic leadership

Congressman Heath Shuler just sent out an email talking once again about the wisdom of his “S.A.V.E. Act” immigration bill. And indeed it is a good first step that, in his words, “expands an existing and successful system of employee verification, and turns off the job magnet that draws hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens across our borders each year.”

But here is the catch — Shuler can introduce such bills all he wants, but the leadership of the House that he himself voted to install has no intention of allowing any serious immigration bill to ever see daylight.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, are both far left members of the “Amnesty and Open Borders Club,” and they have long since sent Shuler’s bill to the shredder. Neither of them would be in control of the fate of immigration bills if Democrats like Shuler had not voted to give them control over the U.S. House.

If voters want real immigration action, it’s time to vote for people like Jeff Miller whose votes for the leadership in D.C. on issues like immigration will match the values of the voters back home.

The Naturalist's Corner

This year will mark the 117th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC.) The CBC is the longest-lived and largest citizen-science project in the world.

The count began in 1900. It was the brainchild of Frank Chapman, one of the officers of the fledgling Audubon Society. Chapman created the “bird census” as an alternative to the traditional Christmas “side-hunt,” a contest where groups would shoulder their arms and hit the fields and/or woods — the team that came back with the greatest number of corpses would be declared the winner.